Joy Luck Club

Joy Luck Club is a collection of stories of Chinese women who have lived in San Francisco. Some stories deal with life in China, but most deal with life in San Francisco. In one, a mother remarks that she hoped to raise a Chinese woman with all the benefits of America, but instead got an American woman. That becomes a sad theme in the book. In spite of growing up in a large Chinese community, these women have mostly lost their Chinese culture. They live like Americans. When they go back to China, they are clearly foreigners. However, in America, they are often not seen as "true Americans" (In one story, she is mistaken for Vietnamese.) The old culture is lost, but there is not a new culture to replace it.
The Chinese mothers come across as the powerful figures. Even in a culture that placed little importance in women, the mother still became the controlling figure in their children's lives. Once in America, the mothers could continue to rely on some of the "old world" knowledge to see through the trappings of materialism in America to realize that their daughters are not doing as well as they thing they are. Alas, it takes adulthood for the daughters to finally come around. Most of their troubles are those typical of upper-middle class Americans. The Chinese culture helped push them out of the "poor refugee" status, but still left them to struggle with life.